


i know my call

by ozmissage



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 23:28:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/182503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozmissage/pseuds/ozmissage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was always the road he was meant to walk. <b>Spoilers through 2x17 “Know Thy Enemy”.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	i know my call

i. _east_

He drives south, stops only to piss and sleep and buy stale sandwiches from questionable truck stops. His trunk is full of crude stakes whittled without practice or care. They’ll do the job if the job ever needs doing. He hopes.

The shadows make him flinch now; the dark makes panic swell in his chest, grips his lungs like a vice until breathing is no longer an option. She’s gone. And the monsters, the fairy tales, the myths, every terrible thing she held dear, are all that’s left. When Alaric closes his eyes he only sees her death. He only feels fear.

He stops driving when he reaches the Georgia state line, opens the door and wretches onto the hot pavement until there’s nothing left in him.

There are stakes in his trunk and vampires in the night and Isobel is nowhere at all.

He closes the door, makes an illegal u-turn in the middle of the road without bothering to look both ways. The compass on his dash is pointing east, pointing home.

Night falls and he breathes easy.

He’s never been one for running.

Never been one for fighting either.

But he’ll learn.

ii. _sin_

His first vampire nearly kills him. It’s a woman, beautiful perhaps. Knowing what she is robs him of his objectivity. To him she’s a monster and nothing more. But she speaks softly, smiles like any other human, tells bad jokes and asks him if he’s been watching _American Idol_ before he pulls the stake from his inside coat pocket and plays his hand.

The change is instantaneous.

Her eyes go black, taking the small spark of humanity he saw there with them.

She slams him against the wall with ease, forces his hand to open and sends the stake clattering to the floor. Alaric’s only thought is this: _This is not how I want to die._

The vampire leans in and he feels the sharp scratch of fangs against the thrumming pulse in his neck. He moves without thinking, his free hand hitting the hidden mechanism on his wrist, popping the second stake free. He forces it into her chest, doesn’t stop pushing until he knows he’s hit the heart.

She dies with her eyes open wide in shock.

Alaric watches as her skin grays. He sees the life leave her and knows it’s because of him.

iii. _jericho_

His father is a preacher.

Alaric should have been. At least that’s what his mother told him until the day she died. But to preach, you must believe, and Alaric never did. He teaches instead.

He and his father find a common ground in history. They live in the past, dwell in facts and half truths and all the things that came before. His father reads him stories, his weathered Bible resting on his knees and Alaric listens. Always. It isn’t his truth, but it is his father’s and that matters.

His father’s favorite story is The Battle of Jericho. It slips into his sermons so often it’s become a private joke in his congregation, but a hush always falls when he reaches the verse where Joshua and his army bring the walls down. His voice will rise and then crack and every person in the church will feel it.

 _By faith the walls of Jericho fell down._

Alaric carries this memory with him, keeps the verse tucked in his wallet as a talisman, a good luck charm, a reminder.

iv. _reservoir_

Jenna doesn’t believe she is strong. _I’ll give you resilient, maybe,_ she laughs, turning away from him to bury her face in a pillow. But Alaric places a hand on her shoulder, gently forcing her to look at him again.

 _You’re strong,_ he whispers and he means it. She’s strong for all of them even though she doesn’t realize it, she’s strong without knowing why she has to be and that’s the most remarkable part. _You have no idea how strong you are._

She rolls her eyes, presses a kiss feather light against his cheek, murmurs _shut up_. So he does.

v. _ruby_

He hates the color red.

Isobel loved it. He would sit on the edge of the bed and watch as she rimmed her lips with her favorite blood red shade. It stained his collars, smudged across his own lips with every kiss.  
Left stains that never quite faded.

vi. _catch_

Damon catches Alaric’s wrist, carelessly tugs him back inside the mansion. It’s late and they’re drunk---at least Alaric is.

"Just stay here," Damon demands rather than says. Stefan is with Elena for the night and the mansion is quiet, empty. Alaric looks at Damon and even through the dense fog of alcohol clouding his mind he realizes the vampire doesn’t want to be left alone.

Alaric sinks back onto the couch, obliging so suddenly that Damon almost seems disappointed that he didn’t put up more of a fight. He hates empty houses too, but he doesn’t tell Damon, knows the vampire would kick him out if he thought Alaric felt anything resembling pity for him.

“Pour me another drink,” Alaric says lightly.

Damon passes him a glass and settles down beside him.

“Have I told you about Woodstock, yet?”

Alaric shakes his head, hides his smile behind his glass of bourbon, and settles in for the night.

vii. _stitch_

He raises his glass for a toast and Elena groans, tosses a wadded napkin at his head and Jenna slaps his arm playfully. Jeremy grins at him from across the table, a show of solidarity.

“To good company,” he says even though it’s cheesy and they all know it.

“To family,” Elena counters with a meaningful glance in his direction.

Jenna blushes and Alaric can’t quite bring himself to meet her eyes, but he has the sudden sense of something clicking back into place.

viii. _arrow_

He lets his guard down, misses all the signs. Isobel is telling him she loves him and then the pain is searing and the world is tilting, twisting, fading.

Dimly, he thinks everything was pointing him to this moment. His end was written the minute he set foot in Mystic Falls, or maybe further back than that, maybe from the moment he first saw Isobel with her dark hair pulled back in a sloppy pony tail, or when his father read his faithless son a fable about the power of belief.

He sees his life clearly. Sees all the arrows pointing him down a path he never should have been walking and knows it’s too late to change directions now.

He’s vaguely aware of being strapped into a chair, the sudden sting of a needle sliding into his vein, drawing the blood away from his still desperately beating heart.

They almost drain him dry, leave just enough to keep his body from stuttering to a stop and then Alaric feels the monster entering him, flooding his senses, drowning out everything he ever knew, everything he ever was.

Alaric’s last thought is this: _This is not how I want to die._

*

i. _lips_

Jenna tastes clean, human. Damon tastes of copper and ash. Elena tastes like freedom.

Klaus licks their blood from his lips with a flick of his tongue. Each death brings him a small jolt of pleasure, a small surge of pride.

Deep, deep, deep down the human is screaming, clawing, searching for a way up, a way out. A thought ripples unbidden to the surface of Klaus’s mind, _By faith, the walls fell._

Klaus throws his head back and laughs.

And the human fights on.


End file.
